Page 259 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XLV. 255
and an epliali for a ram, and a hin of oil for an ephah.’r
(Ver. 21-24.) It is not here thousands of oxen and
sheep offered willingly out of a free heart; hut the
prince and all the people, on the fourteenth day of the
first month, are identified as they never were before
in a single bullock for a sin-offering, while every day of
the seven the prince prepares a complete burnt-offering,
with its sign of perfect consecration to Jehovah, and its
daily sin offering, and not without the appropriate meat­
offering.
Most strikingly however the feast of weeks appears
nowhere. There are those who conceive of the mil­
lennial day as peculiarly the era for the gift of the
Spirit, and who might naturally expect this to be then
far the most prominent of all feasts. Bat it abso­
lutely drops out of the list. This is solemnly instruc­
tive. The gift of the Spirit has been, and is, the
characteristic of this day of grace when we have to
walk in faith and patience, rather than of the day when
the kingdom comes in power. It is not that the Holy
Spirit will not then be poured out on all flesh, for the
prophets are explicit that so it is to be in that day. But
now He is come down, not only in the way of power
and blessing, but baptising all that believe whether
Jew or Gentile into one body, the body of Christ the
glorified Head of the church on high. It will not be
so in the future day. Israel and the nations will be
blessed, and they will rejoice together; but no such
union is predicted as one body. They are to be each on
their own ground, forming distinct circles, however
blessed, around their Lord and God, whose earthly
throne will be Jerusalem in that day. There will be